Chorded keyboard for touchscreens

For over a hundred years, good typists didn’t ‘hunt and peck’ but instead relied on keeping their fingers on the home row. This technique relies on physical buttons, but with on-screen keyboards used on tablets and other touch screen devices touch typists have a very hard time. [Zach] is working on a new project to bring a chorded keyboard to these devices called ASETNIOP.

Instead of training a typist where to place their finger – the technique used in most other keyboard replacements, ASETNIOP trains the typist which fingers to press. For example, typing ‘H’ requires the typist to press the index and middle fingers of their right hand against the touchscreen. In addition to touchscreens, ASETNIOP can be used with projection systems, Nintendo Power Glove replicas, and extremely large touchpads that include repurposed nooks and Kindles.

If you’d like to try out ASENTNIOP, there’s a tutorial that allows you to try it out on a physical keyboard as well as one for the iPad. It’s a little weird to try out but surely no more difficult to learn than a Dvorak keyboard.

I’m a dvorak typist and I will definitely not be trying this – once was enough lol. Learning dvorak has been pretty amazing for my typing and typing speed, no regrets there! As far as touchscreen input goes, swiftkey has been pretty amazing I’ve found – I can just spam the screen without discrimination and type really fast and accurate.

You just described a memory keyer. While not a Morse forever extremist, I keep coming back to Morse for modern devices. A Morse to text App and a simple push button key slipped into an USB port. Combined with a text to Morse App playing Morse through the speaker you could text, and drive without a LEO ever knowing. I read where the old timers texted and drove without a rash of accidents, but then there where fewer texting back then.

I’d have to think over time a person would become fast enough using touch screen keyboard using one or more fingers. Not applying for a typing pool job fast, but fast enough for what devices that use touch screens are typically used for. Not sure why any chording method would have an advantage when using touch screens. Wouldn’t one still have to hold the finger off the screen while being required to hit a target, al be it this method target clams area that is more forgiving.

The main reason would be touch typing, now you can just hover the hands above the tablet, but you don’t have to look at the keys and awkwardly position them. Its quite convenient actually if you think about it .

The only problem I’m having with this at the moment is that the graph telling me which keys are which is annoyingly split across the screen and not in a format that would make it easy to learn what combinations are what.. Maybe displaying it in QWERTY/DVORAK based upon the users preference would be better.

Still not buying the touch screens are great for typing. Recall that slamming your fingertip into a sheet of glass is still far less forgiving than into a spring loaded key. Further, as mentioned above, now you’re hovering over the screen with all 10 fingers trying to keep them close, but not too close to the screen. Finally, either your screen is at a vertical angle, putting your wrists at notable discomfort, or it is lying flat on the table, putting you’re neck in pain.